Gallery: New, Unannounced Podcast features in iPhone OS 3.0

@grg / 7:07 pm PDT • March 17, 2009

The more our guys play with the the new iPhone OS 3.0 firmware, the more little gems they’re finding. Tucked away within the Podcast playback screen are a few subtle changes that went unmentioned during today’s announcement. Apple did say there were some 100 new features in the new OS, so it’ll probably be awhile before we see them all.

New Podcast Features:

The Repeat and Shuffle buttons are gone (probably because they’re rarely used with podcasts, as they tend to be much longer than songs).
The top left of the screen now features a mail icon, which currently just crashes the app. We’d assume this lets you send someone the iTunes link.
In the center, directly below the scrubber, is a button that allows you to instantly rewind by 30 seconds.
On the right is a Speed modifier, allowing you to playback podcasts at double or half their normal rate
Variable speed scrubbing: We’re not sure if Apple has a name for this yet, but we like “Super Scrubbing”. Scrubbing is a fancy term for jumping to the right spot by grabbing the little marker in the timeline and dragging it around. Scrubbing to the perfect spot in a really long audio file is tough – but they’ve made it a whole lot easier. If you hold the marker dead-on, you scrub as normal. If you continue to hold but slide your finger up above the marker, the iPhone goes into “High Speed” scrubbing mode, lowering precision and moving the marker further relative to your finger. If you instead slide below the marker, it enters Half Speed scrubbing mode, which increases precision and allows you to jump around in smaller increments. Continue sliding downward and it enters Quarter speed – you can guess what that one does.

None of these new toys show up during the playback of music or video.

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